Gordon Brown today said that banking needed to become more moral as he called for an end to the era of "irresponsibility and excess" that brought the international economy close to collapse.

In a speech to the Scottish Labour Party, the prime minister said the banks needed to urgently restore their reputation for honesty and integrity.

Brown declined to accept any direct responsibility for the domestic banking crisis, despite coming under pressure recently to issue some sort of apology. Instead, he insisted it was the banks alone who were solely responsible for their collapse.

"In Scotland, you and I were brought to value hard work and effort, enterprise and honesty, integrity and taking responsibility, and these are the values we live by in our families and our working lives," Brown said.

"They are the values of the good society - and they must now become the values of the good economy. They are the values we must spread throughout our banks and our financial system. We have to clean up for good an irresponsibility and excess that has been exposed in every continent of the world."

Brown confirmed he would be pressing the G20 conference of world economic leaders in London next month to adopt four new principles of banking: an end to tax havens; the ending of the short-term bonus culture; regulation covering the health of the entire financial system, not just individual firms; and the creation of a better global framework for international financial supervision.

"I believe there is an emerging consensus on how we strengthen global regulation of our financial markets to prevent any recurrence of the collapse that has caused so much damage to economies around the world," he said, in a reference to his talks with Barack Obama in Washington this weekend.

"There is an agreement that we cannot allow the approach of the lowest common denominator when we need the highest standards of banking trust.

"We cannot allow a race to the bottom in standards, when we need to be at the best standards all around."

Brown claimed that the UK had already led the world by taking action to tackle the recession and by limiting the damaging effects of the recession on jobs, businesses and ordinary people's lives.

He said: "What's making me angry is that good people, hardworking people, are getting squeezed because of banking mistakes and that is why we need an urgent clear-up and clearing out of our banking system."

Brown also used his speech to launch a renewed attack on the SNP's continuing quest for independence.

He welcomed a Scottish parliament vote on Thursday against staging a referendum on independence next year, but said he would introduce new measures to strengthen the powers of the Scottish parliament if they were recommended by the Calman commission on devolution set up last year.

He said that the scale of the collapse of Scotland's two major banks, HBOS and RBS, the collapse of Iceland's economy, and the sharp fall in oil prices had proven that a country of Scotland's size could not survive alone, outside the United Kingdom.

"People know that what scars Scotland is not its border but poverty. That it isn't flags that matter most to the people of Scotland, but fairness. That it's not building embassies that count for the future, but building greater equality," he said.

Brown also said that, at the suggestion of the Scottish secretary, Jim Murphy, the cabinet would meet in Scotland before the summer - the first time in 100 years that it had met north of the border.

About 15 members of the Union of Communication Workers staged a silent protest during the prime minister's speech, sitting down in the centre of the conference hall wearing white T-shirts which said: "Keep the Post Public".